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The Sinners found themselves resting in a safe room within the dungeon. A fair handful had fallen asleep, Dante included. They had all been trudging through the labyrinthine ruins for hours upon hours on end, and so upon the next safe room they encountered, a majority vote concluded that they were allowed a “Wee little nap, just a short one please?”
Still, being in the remains of a long dead Wing’s branch office, dangers still lurked, no matter how safe everything seemed. So, two Sinners, Ishmael and Outis, volunteered to keep watch as the rest of them slept.
And here the two are now, engaging in idle chatter.
“Glad to know we’re all still living trash in your eyes, Outis.”
“Them, maybe. You at least seem to have some salt in your worth, sailor. You’ve taken some hits that entire platoons would wince at the thought of.”
“Whatever pain I experience here is no worse than it can be out there in the open sea. As incompetent a manager as Dante is, they wouldn’t string me up barebacked and flog me until I'm almost unconscious for every minor infraction.”
“Enjoyed a bit of a rebellious streak in your youth, did you? Never took you for an arrogant little asshole sailor type, Ishmael.”
“No, no. Far from it. I was as forgettable as one can be on a ship. See here, when you’re all out there in the open sea, far from land and laws and the order that comes with them, you’ll have to create your own order.”
Ishmael removes her coat and shirt and bundles her hair to one side. She turns around to present the flesh of her back, marred by what Outis only assumes could be hundreds upon hundreds of whip scars, all interlocking and crisscrossing each other like a grotesque spider’s web.
It almost sickens Outis how numerous the scars were. No leader, captain of the seas nor commander upon land, should resort to such mutilation to keep order. Her hand unconsciously reaches out for Ishmael’s back, and she traces the paths of the longest scars of which she could not even tell where half of them even began or ended. Ishmael doesn’t even flinch at her sudden touch. Had she been so badly tortured by her failure of a captain that even the nerves of her back were scourged away?
“…This is no justice nor order, Ishmael. Not even the most incorrigible, rebellious shitheads under any of the commands I’ve previously seen were left with this kind of butchery. Even the old battle-worn veterans I knew had half the scars on your back alone. What maddened fool-captain of yours thought that order warranted this kind of barbaric torture?”
Ishmael simply chuckles. She reaches inside her coat and pulls out two items; an old, beaten wooden pipe, and a tin as big as her palm, filled to the brim with tobacco that smelled of sea-salt. Her hand stuffs the wide end of the pipe with a hefty heaping of the tobacco, and pulling yet another item from her coat (this time, a half rusted lighter with faded symbols etched across it), she lights the pipe and takes a heavy drag.
“Ever sailed on a crew before, Outis?” Ishmael asks. “Merchant, navyman, fisher, something along those lines. Ever been one?”
“Can’t say I have. Our operations never took us to the seas as far as I was aware.”
“Then listen real carefully to me, because this is the justice of the sea. If order is maintained, then it doesn't matter if a cat o’ nine tails is swung more times than I could feasibly handle. It doesn't matter if my freshly torn flesh was cleaned with brine and bandaged up in vinegar soaked cloth. In the eyes of the sea’s laws, it’s as just as it gets.”